My Articles

This is the complete list of my articles. All of them were published in various magazines and on a couple of web sites.

Why Self-Organization Requires Leadership and Governance (for subscribers only)
This article describes the relationship between self-organization and leadership. It also describes why it is silly to compare management to leadership, and what the three requirements are to make self-organization actually work. The article is part of chapter 8 of my book Management 3.0.
Published in Cutter IT Journal, March 2010

We Increment to Adapt, We Iterate to Improve (English) (free PDF download)
This is my explanation of the differences between increments and iterations. Some people made a complete mess of things (in particular the RUP and Scrum guys). Here I attempt to clean it up. The article was reviewed by Mary Poppendieck, Alistair Cockburn, Brad Appleton and Jason Yip, which helped a lot in making the story actually believable.
Published in Methods & Tools (international newsletter) in Summer 2008

Code Ownership Revisited (English) (free PDF download)
In this article I show the reader that there are not two but four ways of dealing with code ownership. I also try to explain the pros and cons of each approach. And there are some interesting pictures of Surinam in it. As you can see, I can even construct something useful out of my vacations.
Published on StickyMinds.com (web site) on June 20, 2008

Progress in Three Dimensions (English) (free PDF download)
In this article I explain how to create burn charts, and how to take into account that there are multiple dimensions of progress in a software project. The publisher’s review process was a real pain in the ***, but worth every minute of it! And it was reviewed by Alistair Cockburn, which is the same as having a stamp of quality on it!
Published in Software Quality Professional (American magazine) in June 2008

Tag Clouds: Usability en Wiskunde (Dutch) (for magazine subscribers only)
This is the Dutch version of the article that was originally published in Dr. Dobb’s magazine. (see below)
Published in Software Developer Network (Dutch magazine) in May 2008

Project Change, A Way of Life (English) (free PDF download)
In software development there is a lot we can learn from complexity theory. In this article I argue that there’s no such thing as a “best” practice. And that enforced company standards are often a bad thing. It also has a nice picture of me and my car in it.
Published on StickyMinds.com (web site) on May 23, 2008

In de IT-sector is een vrouw gelijk aan tien mannen (Dutch) (web page)
In this article I explain that there’s nothing strange about having only few women in IT jobs. The lack of women in software development is a natural effect of a complex system with multiple positive feedback loops. And “positive” is just a mathematical term here! (full PDF)
Published in Automatisering Gids (Dutch newspaper) on June 13, 2008

ASP.NET Providers: weer een desillusie (Dutch) (for magazine subscribers only)
This was my colorful attempt at explaining why I was not happy with the implementations of providers in ASP.NET 2.0. Let’s hope somebody at Microsoft reads it, so they can change it in something that’s actually usable.
Published in Software Developer Network (Dutch magazine) in February 2008

Rigide regels verstoren complexe systemen (Dutch) (web page)
In this article I argue that complex systems may benefit from removing rules. Adding more rules to a system that is already packed with rules may work counterproductive. I am drawing inspiration from the “shared space” principle in traffic regulation, which is about increasing road safety by removing traffic lights.
Published in Computable (Dutch newspaper) on January 20, 2008

Tag Clouds: Usability and Math (English) (web page)
Tag clouds are nowadays a common user interface design pattern. Here I present a generic approach on how to build them. But beware: there’s a bit of math in it! It’s not suitable for the software engineers among us who got through high school by bribing their math teachers.
Published in Dr. Dobb’s (American magazine) in January 2008

Asynchronous Data Access (English) (web page)
This (technical) article of mine is very, very old. But I’m including it here because it’s still one of my favorites. And possibly the funniest I ever wrote. It’s about data access in .NET, and about tapas in Barcelona.
Published on Code Project (web site) on July 9, 2003

That’s it! There’s nothing more right now. But rest assured that it’s my intention to keep the list growing. There’s always something
I’m working on. But as with everything else, it costs time. Lots of
time…